Ethical issues are raised whenever a researcher investigates a particular group or community. These ethical considerations are often compounded by resistance to academic scrutiny on the part of the community or group being investigated.

This is often the case in Fan Studies, where fans conduct what they feel to be private business in the public domain of the internet and other “closed” venues such as fan conventions. Studies of fans by academics often anger fans, who feel that researchers are being disingenuous in their claims of being fellow fans, even as those fans engage in many of the same activities as their academic counterparts. For their part, many researchers still find themselves in ambivalent positions, with one foot inside the academy and on in fandom, unsure of how to identify themselves and often resistant to being too closely identified with their fan communities.

In this essay collection we hope to bring issues of researcher identity, fans’ rights, the legality of fan activity and the sometimes fortuitous and sometimes fraught relationship between fans and media producers are, among others, to the fore.

Please submit a abstracts by June 30, 2010; finaished essays by March 31,, 2011. Essays must be approximately 5,000 words in Harvard Referencing Style with 12-point font. Essays must be written in English, but they do not have to be about the anglophone, western version of the internet. We welcome submissions which include--but are not limited to--the following topics: